Last Friday I was contacted by the very reputable and well-known agent who had been so interested in the book in November. Sadly, she has been overwhelmed by other work and thinks I would be better served by someone else. She hasn’t had time to read the stuff I’ve been trickling through since November, and thinks she would not do me justice given her current workload. We hadn’t signed an agreement. I am a bit disappointed, but at least I know where I stand. I am taking at face value her positive parting shot that I should have no problem finding another agent very quickly. I still have the very short shortlist of agents to approach I had drawn up late last year, so am now aiming to send out a well-targeted submission to a select few around 21 Feb. In the meantime I have polished up chapters 11 to 13 and sent them off to my trusty readers for comment. Fingers crossed that by the end of this month I should have secured another agent…
About Caroline Shenton
Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and Mary Beard called it 'microhistory at its absolute best' while Dan Jones considered it 'glorious'. Its acclaimed sequel, Mr Barryís War, about the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was a Book of the Year in 2016 for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was described by Lucy Worsley as 'a real jewel, finely wrought and beautiful'. During 2017 Caroline was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone's Library.
